It’s said that the secret to seeing everything is simply living long enough. If that’s true, the U.S. Supreme Court listened to the claims of a lifetime this week as attorneys attempted to defend Hawaii’s onerous gun control regime.
Justices this week heard arguments over the island state’s notorious “vampire rule.” This miscarriage of justice demands that lawful gun owners obtain permission before carrying firearms on private property that’s open to the public.
Justices were surprised by arguments from defenders of Hawaii’s gun control regime
Incredibly, lawyers for Hawaii relied on racist “Black Codes” enacted after the Civil War to suppress the rights of American citizens as justification for their rule.
This tactic shocked the court’s majority.
Blacks in post-Civil War America faced numerous restrictions on where they could live and travel, and many sought to restrict their gun rights. Racist laws were enacted that have not been on the books for many decades, but according to gun rights opponents are somehow relevant to modern gun control.
Supreme Court will hand down a monumental ruling later this year
Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed his shock at the depths to which anti-gunners will go to suppress Second Amendment liberties. “I want to understand how you think Black Codes should inform this court’s decision-making. It’s quite astonishing.”
Justice Samuel Alito went further, questioning how lawyers could cite practices that were clearly discriminatory to support their arguments.
“Wasn’t the purpose of the laws in the post-Reconstruction South that disarmed Black people precisely to prevent them from doing what the Second Amendment was designed to protect?” the incredulous jurist asked. “They wanted to disarm the Black population to help the [Ku Klux] Klan terrorize them. They wanted to put them at the mercy of racist law enforcement officers. So, is it not the height of irony to cite [that]?”
Justice Clarence Thomas added that the 14th Amendment was enacted for the specific purpose of protecting freedmen’s rights against such atrocities as the Black Codes.
Not all of the court was horrified by the reliance on outdated and racist regulations to buttress Hawaii’s arguments.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, generally a gun rights opponent, defended the use of discredited political philosophies by citing 2022’s Supreme Court Bruen decision. The newest member of the high court blamed having to consider the nation’s history and tradition of gun laws for the startling arguments.
“It’s because we have a test that asks us to look at the history and tradition,” Jackson told the court. “The fact that the Black Codes were, at some later point, determined themselves to be unconstitutional doesn’t seem relevant to the assessment that Bruen is asking us to make.”
Despite Jackson’s objections, the court’s majority seemed put off by Hawaii’s law. After all, there is plenty to support the system in place for centuries of exercising gun rights unless a private property owner says otherwise.
Hawaii, in a legislative temper tantrum after Bruen’s passage nearly four years ago, sought to make virtually the entire state off-limits for Second Amendment-related activities. Gun rights attorney Alan Beck explained that the hotly-contested law reverses clear historical precedent.
“Every private property owner has the right to affirmatively put up a sign or otherwise not give permission for people to enter the property with firearms,” Beck noted. “The crux of our argument is why flip that historical default from them having to affirmatively say guns are not allowed here to the current law.”
Several other states enacted similar laws, and the Supreme Court’s decision could have far-reaching effects.
A ruling is expected by late June in what promises to be one of the most significant high court decisions on the Second Amendment in recent years.
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